


Never been kissed / Valentine's Day

by travellinghopefully



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-29 21:38:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6394831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travellinghopefully/pseuds/travellinghopefully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt/idea on tumblr @Petercapaldiimagines - a woman who has never been loved is whisked away by the Doctor ...</p><p>well here you go....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She didn’t feel she had the right to say she felt lonely, not living with her family like she did.

Wistful, that was it. 

Life really hadn’t turned out as she had expected. It wasn’t that she’d had a plan...but if she had...this wasn’t it. She had thought there would be a husband – someone solid and reliable, dependable...she didn’t hold with any nonsense about romance or passion, that wasn’t how relationships lasted, that wasn’t how they worked. She looked at her contemporaries, married, divorced, rinse, repeat. 

That certainly wasn’t for her. 

She had pictured children, one of each, good natured, even tempered, a credit to their parents, truth be told she was old enough now for grandchildren, not that she would admit it or say anything to anyone, but her arms felt empty and in the dead of the night when the old wool blankets (a lot of wear left in them yet, they weren’t a duvet family, they didn’t hold with things like that) failed to combat the cold, no central heating, one coal fire in the living room, only lit as it heated the back boiler, hot water, bath on a Sunday, washing on Monday shopping on Saturday, the list unchanging… in the dead of the night, then, then the thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone. 

Her father knew what he liked, good substantial plain food, nothing fancy, no sauces, nothing he hadn’t tried before, store brand, preferably discounted and in bulk, brand names only a way of paying more for exactly the same thing – bread at the end of the day, didn’t matter as long as it was sliced and white and cheap, veg from the bin on the side, odd shapes didn’t matter and you could cut off the spoiled bits

– the financial contribution to the housekeeping unwavering regardless of prices or the passage of years – she couldn’t complain, not really, her family relied on her.

There was only her, just her, her mum’s health was so poor that her father would never be able to cope without her and a home was unthinkable. 

Unthinkable. 

A home showed you didn’t care, or couldn’t be bothered, so her father said. 

Mother and father had a television in their room, there was no need for her to have one as well, and good heavens, why on earth would she want to read after she had gone to bed? Lights out at 9.30 up at 5.30 sharp and however many times her mother needed her through the night, her father said it was only proper that she should see to her mother, that’s what daughters did, and she surely didn’t think he would do any housework? Hadn’t he worked hard all his life to provide for the family? He wasn’t about to start putting on a pinny now. He’d seen that they were secure, hadn’t he? Put a roof over their head, food on the table? She had no idea what money her father had, but she knew it was her wages that paid the bills, the extra book keeping she brought home that made ends meet. She had raised the matter once, when there repairs, so pressing, so critical, so expensive that the conversation couldn’t be deferred. It hadn’t gone well, and it had been decided that the expense of two different buses to work was a needless luxury (for her) – she could ride her father’s old bike, it had been good enough for him, and it would be fine for her. They could economise (she could), savings were there for a rainy day, you cut your coat according to your cloth … more clichés until she wanted to cover her hands with her ears, until she wanted to scream, until she acquiesced as she always did.

She turned down invitations, ‘til they didn’t come anymore. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go, but whatever she planned, no matter where, no matter when, some emergency always cropped up at home, they couldn’t do without her, not for a minute…they never called her away from work.

Everyone who was asked or commented (not that anyone even gossiped about her anymore) said how sensible she was, eminently sensible. Never promoted beyond her niche, utterly reliable. Silver hairs that she couldn’t afford to dye – it was all vanity anyway, no one cared two hoots how she looked, never a dab of makeup, moisturiser from the 99p store when she could. If anyone was pushed, they would be compelled to say her look wasn’t merely practical, she was sliding into drab, just this side of shabby, nothing bright, nothing remotely erring towards fashionable. No fripperies. She didn’t meet with clients. It was thought best. Who by, no one said. 

No one knew of the hours she lay awake, long after the sounds of the house had died away, her arms wrapped round her pillow for comfort as much as warmth, telling herself stories until she slid into sleep. Stories of a different life, of one she wished she had, one that she knew wasn’t real. She didn’t sigh. 

Never been kissed, well that wasn’t strictly true, but it was approaching so long ago she wasn’t sure it counted anymore.

She kept looking for the reset button on her life, there had to have been a mistake somewhere, a crucial categorical error, one that she didn’t realise at the time. She couldn’t have just allowed her life to drift to where it was moored now? Could she?

One luxury left, coffee and cake on a Friday. She finished work early on a Friday, that one precious hour was hers, and hers alone. Mother and father never needed to know. This week wasn’t like the others, she didn’t even have enough money left for cake, a black coffee would just have to do – she could lose herself in a library book and forget about what she was denied.

Someone sat down opposite her. She didn’t look up, if you looked up, people talked to you. She didn’t want to talk, this hour was hers, no one could take away this time.


	2. Mad Man in a Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, a mad man buys a stranger a piece of cake. He takes her time travelling. She is not impressed. He is obviously mad, or Derren Brown, or all of the above.
> 
> Trying to steer clear of the normal awe and wonder the Doctor is greeted with

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where would you like to see this fic heading?

Valentine’s day wasn’t what it used to be, a day for those who weren’t already couples. She hadn’t looked at the post, it would be all bills anyway. Now, it was a commercial nightmare for the happily smug. Hearts everywhere, limp overpriced red roses, scandalous the prices people paid for things hot housed and air freighted, it wasn’t as if they even smelled like roses. They looked so beautiful…how many groceries could she buy for dozen red roses? The windows plastered with paper hearths, the normally sober surroundings transformed, for no good reason and to no good effect.

“Time Travel – utter nonsense!”

She had listened to the man for more than 20 minutes. He had expounded on everything from global warming, to bees, to weight loss, and now time travel. The man was mad. She should have left when he sat down. She should definitely have left when he bought her a coffee, and what was he thinking when he bought her cake? Who did he think he was? What kind of name was "the Doctor." Doctor of what? Doctor who? Honestly, she should never have encouraged him, just kept her head down and ignored him. Her one hour, wasted on a mad man. If she told her parents they would criticize her, if she told her parents they would know about her hour off, how had her life painted her into a corner, abandoned her in a cul-de-sac of triviality, repetition and banality and mad men?

“I’ll prove it to you.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Really, presenting her with a slice of cake and having the audacity to talk to her was quite enough of an intrusion into her life, the fancy coffee was undeniably welcome, black coffee really didn’t cut it. She might have given a happy sigh as she took her first sip, hastily wiping the cream off her top lip, she tried not to think how he knew she liked amaretto – suppressing thoughts of mad, weirdo stalkers, well, mostly suppressing the thoughts. Really, what was he wearing? A punk refugee was hardly the look for a quiet market town coffee shop….was it? What vibe had she given off that he thought it was acceptable to sit by her and talk, admittedly she didn’t have ear buds in, which even she knew was the universal symbol for go away. Surely the book she had her nose buried in (however bad it was) was enough of a hint?

“Anyway, I have to be going.” Checking the time on the clock over the counter, the hour had slipped away without her realising. 

“Time travel…having to go, really isn’t an issue….”

He had stolen her time, maybe he could give it back – no, it was utterly ridiculous. Mad old man, unkempt hair, wild clothes, arms that gestured expansively whilst he spoke. Good heavens was his jacket velvet, she was mildly astonished that there wasn’t cream up the sleeves, although there did seem to be a good covering of chalk. She looked around, maybe this was one of those hideous reality programmes that everyone was talking about, were they waiting for her to call his bluff or go along with him and then find some way of extending, eking out the humiliation for the titillation of teatime tv viewers? Hmmm?

He wasn’t letting the matter go.

“Anyway, you haven’t finished your cake.”  
His arm waved again to encompass the yet uneaten confection of chocolate, cream and strawberries that sat on the plate in front of her. It wasn’t as if she had asked for the cake, despite how much she wanted it, how much it had appealed to her when she had seen it sitting in the chiller cabinet at the counter when she had ordered her black coffee…The book she had thought would take her mind away from the perceived injustices eating away at her life had been a bitter disappointment, the blurb on the jacket entirely failing to capture the insipid characters and tissue thin plot – she had turned to a page at random and read that, a habit she maintained, never quite believing what was on the outside – but that had somehow been misleading too. Maybe she had put the book she thought she had selected down and picked up another by mistake. Cake, she was debating the cake, eating it, not eating it, it wasn't the cake, it was the principle of the thing, well she thought the principle was the thing, cake wasn't symbolic or symptomatic, it was just cake, she wasn't having a metaphysical or existential crisis over cake. She couldn’t be encouraging strange men into buying her cake, that was something she could be unequivocal about, that wasn't open for debate. Not that she made a habit of that, well, not that she did that at all, and it was only cake, it was unlikely he had somehow contrived to drug a piece of cake, even more unlikely that he was planning to make off with her, but why on earth would he buy her a piece of cake? When had someone last bought her anything? When had she last had a coffee with a man? Not that she was actually doing that now. The man was at the same table as her, that wasn't the same thing. She could have giggled, but that wasn’t really appropriate was it? 

He was quite obviously mad, time travel, the very idea.

Something tugged at her memory, had she read something or other by Jules Verne when she was at school? H. G. Wells, that was him, she wasn’t sure she had liked the book, or been very satisfied with what had happened….a flying armchair in a basement? Morlocks and Eloi, oh god, did they eat each other or something like that…no, she definitely didn’t like that. And the cinema was always showing some futuristic block buster nonsense. 

Quite mad.

“Well if you aren’t eating it, I am. And…I believe it is still customary to say thank you.”

“I didn’t ask for the coffee, or the cake, or for you to sit down or for you to start talking to me….”

When had she become so abrupt, so prickly, so hostile? She used to enjoy a chat, meeting new people. But what was the point in that, there was no time left for friends, there was no point meeting anyone, no point making new ones.

She hesitated.

“Thank you….and sorry….bit of a bad week.” Bad month, bad year, bad decade, honestly so far, bad century – she didn’t say that out loud.

He was pulling the plate with the cake on it nearer to him, he had eaten a toasted tea cake, a jam tart, an assortment of violently coloured macaroons, a huge piece of the same cake and a monstrous hot chocolate with cream, flake, marshmallows and maltesers (something she believed was a foolish invention for children) – he had appeared to relish every drop, digging a spoon into the thing and scooping out every last drop. There were traces of chocolate round his mouth and the suggestion of cream in his sideburns, she resisted using a serviette to scrub the mess away – much as her grandma would have done when she was a little girl. He was a grown man and a stranger, still, he seemed a little childlike and lost…still, not something you did. Now that he was proposing to eat the cake she found her previous vacillation was replaced by rather strong proprietariness towards the slice. She held onto the edge of the plate.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it, you took me surprise that’s all.”

“You were surprised by cake? Have you had many hostile encounters with cake then? I do remember this one time…but ah, you’re doing that that thing again – looking at me disapprovingly, I’ll shut up.”

He nodded and pushed the plate back towards her. Just as she was about to dig in with her fork he started talking again.

 

It didn’t prove anything at all.

Oh good heavens was that woman really her? Had no one thought to mention to her how shabby she looked? And her hair and the way her clothes just hung on her? There was a bag lady on the high street, dog on string, all her worldly goods in bin bags in a shopping trolley and she was turned out better than her. Blue cheese, she was dreaming that must be it, a piece of blue cheese, that was what this was. She couldn’t remember when she had last had any, she could, which was sad, a piece for 9p, late night last minute knock down at Tesco’s. Did you enumerate shopping purchases in dreams? She wasn’t sure, something about pinching? She pinched him.

“Oi! What was that for?”

She could have said it was because he was holding her hand, but that was nice, large hands, firm grip, she couldn’t remember when she had last been touched, certainly not when someone had held her hand. 

“Dreaming, you pinch to check if you are dreaming.”

“You pinch yourself, not me! Anyway, any headache, any ice cream pain just here?”

He poked the side of her head.

“NO!” 

She emphasised this with an emphatic shake of her head, swatting his hand away at the same time. He looked astonishingly affronted and she found a tiny portion of herself feeling a teensy bit guilty for hurting his feelings. If this was a con, he really was a very good actor, and, surprisingly engaging, even with his constant prattling commentary on patently absurd things. 

“Probably not dreaming then and probably not aliens digesting your brain into soup.”

“That’s comforting, never really fancied that.”

“And what did you mean, that doesn’t prove anything?”

“Well, could be anyone, I’m quite sure I don’t look like that.”

“Look at the café window, see, you’re sitting down, pulling your book out of your bag, read it by the way, rubbish, wouldn’t spend any more time on it, can’t think why you picked it. NO! Do not wave! Honestly, pudding brain, no instigating dimensional paradoxes.”

“That’s a thing is it? Dimensional paradoxes?”

It was all too ridiculous, she might as well play along and who was he calling a pudding brain? That didn’t sound very flattering, and in the end, it was him who had finished the cake, the piece far too large and too rich for her to eat. She was concentrating very hard on not noticing that the man she was standing next to, the man still holding her hand, appeared to be sitting down next to the woman who couldn’t possibly be her. 

Derren Brown, that’s it, psychological manipulation, video, mirrors, or a combination of all of them.

“Why does everyone always think it’s Derren Brown?”

She hadn’t said that out loud, had she?

“Really, UNIT should cut back on sending him flowers. Right! Where do you want to go? Where will prove it?”

She looked at her watch, it must have stopped, it was earlier than when she had last looked. He was mad, she was mad, it was infectious. Possibly, when she thought he wasn’t looking she pinched herself, hard. She didn’t wake up. It hurt.

“Great Barrier Reef, Grand Canyon, that place with the blue lava, tigers. If you can travel and time is no object take me there.”

“That wasn’t one place, that was lots of places.”

“You said time didn’t matter.”

“I never said time doesn’t matter, time always matters, time is precious…it’s, just well, I can travel in it… You don’t believe me do you, and I may have mentioned that I can travel in time and space?”

“You’re dressed like a magician, you claim this is nothing to do with Derren Brown, you claim you aren’t Derren Brown.”

“Enough about Derren Brown….”

She held a hand up and kept talking.

“And, you seriously expect me to believe you, it’s ludicrous. But, if I’m dreaming, if you’ve drugged me.”

He looked aghast. She kept talking before he could say something.

“If, I’ve lost my mind, I might as well enjoy it.”

“That’s the spirit, although you are wrong, not drugged, not dreaming, not mad, not Derren Brown.”

“I hadn’t finished! Now you say you can travel in space, well that’s just lovely, but I’ve no idea what space is like, for all I know you could take me to Cleethorpes, some beach in Wales, a random quarry and tell me its space, a bit of special effects, make up, fancy dress and you can pass anything off as, well anything. You’ve a box that’s bigger on the inside, that looks like an old fashioned police call box, and it can travel in time and space. Yeah, right.”

“Have you always been this cynical? Lacking in adventure? Romance? Imagination? Well, I suppose I should have realised, you didn’t want a perfectly good piece of chocolate cake, hardly any hope for you. Honestly. Right, well, I’ll be off then…you’ve plenty of time to get to wherever you so desperately want to be.”  
Wait, was that it, was that what he thought? It shouldn’t matter what some mad random stranger thought of her, but it did. No romance, no imagination, no adventure, cynical. She would show him. She raced after him, stepping through the doors of the blue box.

“I never said you should go.”

“Nope, you had your chance, out you go.”

“No! I am staying right here. Show me something, show me something I can’t argue with.”

She stood there with her arms folded, slowly realising what it was she had said, what she had done. She had chased after the mad man, followed him into the impossible box, right, now was the time for the film crew to jump out and embarrass her.

He pulled a few levers, things moved and whirred, there was a whooshing, wheezing sound. He strode past her and flung the doors wide, gesturing for her to step outside. Well she couldn’t really protest if he threw her out of his own space. It was probably time for her to go home and start on tea anyway.

“Venice.”

“Venice?”

Well, she wasn’t home anymore. How had he done that? She had to give him that, the special effects were amazing.

Her arms were still folded, her expression still closed, her lips still pursed.

“How can you not be impressed by Venice?”

“It smells! Anyway it could be Birmingham, Birmingham has canals.”

“Well, I’ll give you that, you’re unfailingly obstinate.”

He twirled on the spot his arms gesturing outwards pointing out the very un-Birmingham architecture. 

“Venice. And everywhere and everything smells. You smell!”

“I do not!”

“Yes, you do, vanilla, soap, softener, toothpaste, hints of chocolate, coffee, strawberries. Everyone smells.”

**Author's Note:**

> I crave feedback - what can I say.... ::cough:: attention whore ::cough::
> 
> Hated this - tell me
> 
> Loved this - please tell me
> 
> Really loved this - please share


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